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10
The next day greeted them with chirping birds and a sleepy sun that hung low in the sky. The rain had ceased. Now a lazy fog swirled in the valley around them, blanketing the trees in grey and white. Brett opened his eyes after a stretch and a yawn to see Ellie carefully balanced on the large bough. Her head rested on her crossed front paws. She looked so peaceful. He didn’t want to wake her. Not yet anyway.
He used his hooked claws to climb down the tree trunk to check out the damage to their camp below. It was slow going, but he was far more coordinated in his sloth form. And the thought of descending from the tree naked in human form was cringeworthy. Brett didn’t even want to imagine how that would feel on his bare skin and nether region.
As he reached the soggy ground, Brett kept his eyes averted from the direction of the dead man. Instead, he headed toward their tent. His skin tingled and itched as his fur receded, turning back into hair. The bones of his limbs popped and cracked as they lengthened. Soon Brett was in human form, reaching for the clothes that he’d neatly piled on one of the tree limbs above him. They were still soaking wet, but he figured he needed something on before he assessed the damage to their camp.
He fought with the tent poles once more, succeeding in propping up a lopsided enclosure. It was better than they’d accomplished last night. Water rolled off the fabric in tiny rivers. Brett gritted his teeth. It would be a miracle if anything within was still dry.
Brett was amazed to find that while the bottom of his bookbag was soaked, the clothes near the top weren’t that bad. He changed into the dry garments and pulled out Ellie’s bag. She wasn’t as lucky. Her side of the tent was the wettest. Brett hung up what he could in the tree and laid an outfit out on a dry, sunny patch of a rock outcropping.
After Brett had everything hanging out to dry, he ripped open a granola bar for breakfast. He’d sat down on a rock when he heard aplunk. Ellie had jumped out of the tree. She stretched out her front legs with a yawn before hunching her back up. Her blue eyes seemed to glow behind the black fur. She peered up at him, blinking in the sunlight.
“I just laid everything out, but I doubt any of it is dry yet,” Brett explained before taking a bite of his food. Cat Ellie sauntered over to him, weaving once through his legs before she stopped. He realized she was facing the direction of the dead man.
“I guess you didn’t decide to ignore it, like I did,” he said, finally making himself look in that direction.
Ellie ran forward to the empty spot where the body had been the night before.
Brett peered around. Aside from the wreck of a tent and hanging clothes in the trees, nothing else was in their clearing. The corpse was gone, and there weren’t any footprints or drag marks in the still-wet ground to indicate that he’d been taken.
It was as if some creature plucked the body off the ground and flew away. Knowing the size of the hawk, Brett supposed that could have been what happened.
Brett looked up, heart pounding, searching for any sign of the hawk that chased them earlier. Nothing but regular-sized birds dotted the sky and sang on the nearby treetops.
Ellie’s tail twitched in agitation as she sniffed the ground, as though conducting her own investigation. She let out a loudmeowbefore peering up at the sky.
“I know,” Brett replied. “I think the hawk took him too.” He wasn’t entirely sure that was what her cry meant, but it felt rude not to answer her.
She blinked back up at him with almond-shaped eyes, her pupils tiny slits in her blue irises under the bright light of the sun. Her tail continued to twitch impatiently, flicking dried dirt here and there.
“Do you want to see if you have any clothes dry enough to wear? Or should we wait a bit longer?” Brett asked her.
Ellie turned her attention back to the tree with the garments hanging in it before looking back to the skies.
“It makes me nervous too, thinking that bird is still out there,” Brett admitted. He brought his hand up to the site of yesterday’s wounds, which were now fully healed. Even so, he felt a phantom pain as he remembered the hawk swooping down and sinking its talons into his skin. He didn’t want to see that creature ever again. Hopefully, it had slunk back to whatever lab it crawled out of. Maybe the man who’d tried to kidnap Ellie last night was its master, and it would move on, not having someone to tell it what to do.
Elliemeowedin agreement. After peeling her eyes away from the sky, she trotted off toward the tree where Brett had left her clothes. He found himself scanning the air above them in her absence.
But this time, it wasn’t the hawk on his mind.
He brought his fingers to his lips, remembering the kiss that lingered there. Had Ellie kissed him because she had felt vulnerable under the circumstances and needed some affection? Had he taken advantage of the situation? He hoped she didn’t view it that way. Brett didn’t want the kiss to be a fluke of circumstances. He wanted their relationship to grow into something lasting.
Ellie was such a sweet girl. And under her bubbly exterior, she was tough as nails. He admired her perseverance, strength, smarts, and genuine niceness. His heart ached that Ellie was not only a rescued experiment but that she had to endure what had been happening to them on their trip. This was supposed to be a challenging—yet fun—assignment. True, they’d expected to be tested. But the stakes were way too high for Ellie. Someone was after her!
A gentle touch on his back brought him out of his thoughts. It was Ellie, smiling up at him, back in human form.
“How are you doing today?” he asked.
She bit her lip. The expression was so cute it took all Brett had in him not to kiss her again. “My clothes are a bit damp,” she explained, tugging on them, “but I’ll survive.” She gave a weak smirk.
“I was asking about more than just the clothes.” Brett didn’t like that she seemed to be brushing off what had happened last night. He offered a slow smile, trying to put her at ease. To let her know that he supported her.
Her eyes looked distant as she turned back to the sky, scanning overhead. “I’ll feel better when we get to the extraction point.” She suddenly looked Brett over and smiled. “Maybe when this is done, you can take me out to dinner.” Ellie gave his arm a playful squeeze before she trotted toward the tent. “Wanna help me pack up so we can get the hell outta here?” she called over her shoulder, her voice back to its usual bright timbre.
Brett’s heart fluttered in his chest at her touch. And at her offer.Dinner?he thought. He couldn’t wait to get them to safety so they could focus on each other.
Ellie didn’t want to think about what had transpired last night. Shekilledsomeone. Or at least she thought she had. Was someone really dead if there was no evidence? Maybe they’d both been wrong. She couldn’t remember checking the man’s pulse. Maybe he’d shifted when they went up into the trees and then crawled off to heal.
